My fear is simple: what if the state-witness arrangement with former DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan becomes less about exposing the flood-control scandal and more about containing it?
In theory, turning an insider into a state witness can make sense. Corruption schemes are hard to prove through documents alone. You need someone who can explain how the machinery worked: who approved what, who pressured whom, who benefited, and how the paper trail was made to look legitimate.
But that logic becomes harder to accept when the insider is not a clerk, a contractor, or a middleman. Bonoan was the secretary of the very department at the center of the scandal. If someone at that level is offered immunity or practical protection, the public has every right to ask: protection in exchange for what?
The danger is a managed performance of accountability. Bonoan is converted from accused to witness. He names contractors, district engineers, technical officers, and other replaceable figures. A few people are sacrificed. The headlines announce progress. The government claims it is serious. But no political patrons are touched. No powerful beneficiaries are exposed. No major fish are caught.
That would be a betrayal dressed up as prosecution.
A state witness should not become a legal detergent for washing away the liability of someone near the top of the chain. If Bonoan truly knows how these projects moved, then his testimony should lead upward, outward, and inward — to the people who planned, protected, funded, approved, and profited from the scheme.
If all he delivers are fall guys, the public should not be impressed. It should be suspicious.
The test is not whether the government can produce names. It can always produce names. The test is whether those names reveal the real architecture of corruption. If the witness points only downward while the powerful remain safely outside the frame, then this is not accountability.
It is damage control.